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Some school shooters faced terrorism charges, contrary to social media claims | Fact check

Katie Smith   Paste BN
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The claim: No school shooter has been charged with terrorism

A Dec. 19 Threads post (direct link, archive link) claims UnitedHealth Care CEO shooting suspect Luigi Mangione is facing harsher consequences than school shooters.

"You mean luigi mangione could face the death penalty. being charged with an act of terrorism when not ONE school shooter has been charged with that," reads the post.

It was reposted more than 4,000 times in 12 days, and similar versions of the claim spread on X.

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Our rating: False

Terrorism charges connected to school shootings are rare but not unprecedented. Several people have been charged with terrorism-related crimes in connection to school shootings, including a teen who killed four people in Michigan.

Some school shootings charged as terrorism

Mangione was arrested Dec. 9 and charged in connection with the Dec. 4 shooting death of UnitedHealth Care CEO Thompson outside a midtown Manhattan hotel. Among the charges against him are one count of first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism and two counts of second-degree murder, one as an act of terrorism, as Paste BN previously reported. He has pleaded not guilty to New York state charges.

While New York does not have the death penalty, Mangione has also been charged with federal crimes that could make him eligible for the death penalty, according to CBS News.

But contrary to the post's claims, school shooters have also been charged with terrorism-related crimes.

For example, prosecutors in Michigan applied a terrorism law in 2021 after a teenage shooter opened fire at Oxford High School in Detroit, killing four students and injuring at least seven others. The gunman, Ethan Crumbley, was charged with terrorism causing death, first-degree murder, assault with intent to commit murder and felony weapons charges. He pleaded guilty to each offense in December 2023 and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

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At least four shooting incidents involving schools in Arkansas were also charged as acts of terrorism in 2020 and 2021, according to Center for Homeland Defense and Security data. Not all of those shootings were fatal. One case involved a man accused of firing shots at a school building and athletics press box.

Students in Michigan and Florida have also been convicted of terrorism-related charges for planning school shootings.

Other non-school-related shootings have also been charged as terrorist acts, including a racially motivated May 2022 shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket that killed 10 people.

Not all states have domestic terrorism laws

Charging shooters with terrorism-related crimes isn't an option in every state since 32 states and Washington, D.C., criminalize domestic terrorism, according to data compiled by the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law. Some states have separate laws against making terroristic threats or supporting a terrorism offense.

In New York, prosecutors can charge certain crimes as acts of terrorism if they believe a suspect meant to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping,” according to the state’s anti-terrorism law.

Prosecutors used that exact language in the indictment charging Mangione with first-degree and second-degree murder as acts of terrorism.

On a federal level, suspected domestic terrorism often yields charges more specific to the alleged act, such as crimes related to weapons, threats, hoaxes and those criminalizing attacks on federal officials or facilities rather that charges that specifically reference terrorism, according to a 2023 Government Accountability Office report. Federal prosecutors can increase the sentence for some crimes if they show the offender’s motive involved domestic terrorism.

The Threads user who posted the claim did not immediately respond to Paste BN’s request for comment.

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